We are still adding a few final features, so if you have a request for a feature that is not there you might hold off on that for a day or two

Yes, the bar is black1. Also give that a day or two to sink in.

I also want to specifically address the meta/main/chat links.

I'm very aware that many of you like having the links at the top of the page and that this new version is different.

The thought process behind moving these links is that the "site switcher" should be an automatic place to go when you are on a site and want to go to another one. If you haven't already developed the muscle memory for these links, getting between them required a bit of a cognitive load: You must first decide that you want to switch sites and then you have to decide which area to go to to switch.

Also, we find that less familiar users aren't entirely clear what a standalone link that says "main" or "meta" actually does... Not to mention that it hurts my UX sensibilities that we are dynamically changing links in an element that should be fixed.

It is true that we have added a click in the process, but we have also removed a lot of clicks for other common actions that are much more frequent than switching between main and meta.

All I ask is that you give it a few days and see if the new "switch sites at the top left" paradigm grows on you.

This question exists because it has historical significance, but it is not considered a good, on-topic question for this site, so please do not use it as evidence that you can ask similar questions here. This question and its answers are frozen and cannot be changed. More info: help center.

On a whole, this is awesome! Thanks, Jeremy/Jin/Laura!
– ManishearthNov 14 '13 at 22:48

8

It's pretty sleek but it would be nice if you could filter on achievement types, badges get drowned in rep
– Mathias R. JessenNov 14 '13 at 22:55

10

Fix to the list of sites is good, but only 4 of them? I would like at least ten before it switches to the alphabetical order remainders. Or probably "everything over 200" like the rep graph does.
– Kate GregoryNov 14 '13 at 23:10

33

I'd prefer my username make a comeback and replace the teeny tiny gravatar. You can't really see the image very well anyway.
– WendiKiddNov 14 '13 at 23:19

27

Wait, will this be (off-)black on every site? Even established sites whose color schemes were carefully decided upon long ago and for which a black bar is quite jarring?
– user206562Nov 15 '13 at 0:06

@AnnaLear what about the vote count? I find that pretty handy...
– davidsleepsNov 15 '13 at 2:13

15

@chuex No, but you can tap the triangle. I still use it on my tablets. To be fair, it's not a big hit target.
– KevinNov 15 '13 at 3:12

4

@AnnaLear: Then where is the link to the priviledges?
– Martin SchröderNov 15 '13 at 10:55

1

@AnnaLear I see now that there is rep-by-question in the... right-most left-hand box, but it would still be nice to get the day/week/month summary, maybe on top of that pulldown.
– KevinNov 15 '13 at 13:19

2

@Kevin We'd like to be able to do that, but the way we had to aggregate across sites it's just not possible for us to get the day/week/month roll ups with the performance we would need.
– Jeremy TNov 15 '13 at 23:25

1

@AnnaLear This is a better place for either the rep changes or the badges. They shouldn't be in the same "menu", as the rep changes drown out the badges.
– IzkataNov 16 '13 at 20:19

Please, for the love of god, put this back. I can't believe the two main posts requesting this dropdown be added back have both been dismissed as "doubt[ing] the dropdown will be coming back."
– Michael IrigoyenNov 20 '13 at 13:44

1

At first I wanted too. After several days with the new design I got used to it and it's actually... cleaner.
– Shadow WizardNov 21 '13 at 9:27

I think it is done this way, at least in part, because of Cross-Validated (which will come up if you type in "stat"). It works the same way as the Moderator Migration dialog's search. Nobody searches for "cross" if they're looking for a statistics site, unless they already know the name of the site.
– Robert HarveyNov 14 '13 at 23:09

@RobertHarvey Why would you sort by the description? Same reason, just that the URL seems better to me since the description has more (possibly irrelevant) words in it. And again, case in point, Ham.SE.
– ManishearthNov 14 '13 at 23:20

1

Y'know, if you'd finished typing the s on the end of that search, we wouldn't even be having this lovely conversation. :) And the "ham" example could be solved by putting "ham radio" in the description.
– Robert HarveyNov 14 '13 at 23:21

3

@RobertHarvey LOL. That works, though the issue really is there for phys too. Ideally p or ph should bring it up but somehow the English language seems to like that letter combination :P
– ManishearthNov 14 '13 at 23:22

16

I think the main idea behind this is that matches in the title should be given a higher priority than matches in the description.
– pokeNov 16 '13 at 1:17

No, you cannot. You really want to go to Astronomy.
– called2voyageDec 2 '13 at 22:14

This is fixed by a build rolling out now.
– Nick Craver♦Dec 5 '13 at 2:00

That, definitely. Also, a very faint border, glow or shadow to distinct it better from the underlying background.
– Madara UchihaNov 14 '13 at 22:45

20

You could probably do away with the icon entirely, if you had to. I already know what mine looks like.
– Robert HarveyNov 14 '13 at 22:46

Yep 18 pixels are way too tiny by all means. Better off without it, can't see anything in such a small scale anyway.
– Shadow WizardNov 14 '13 at 23:00

That might look ugly for some. Though if you give it a small border, that would work. Then again, what Robert says makes sense, the only reason I would want to see my gravatar is so that I am reminded of which sockpuppet I'm browsing with. (Well, TBH the icon is good UX from the new user POV)
– ManishearthNov 14 '13 at 23:04

9

I like your face too! The icon isn't meant for making out what the picture is. You know what it is. It's your gravatar after all. Even if we made it full height of the top bar, it may not be adequate enough for some users' photos. The small gravatar here is a replacement for your user name, a way to show that you're in fact logged in and a hit box to link to your user profile page.
– JinNov 14 '13 at 23:49

(Repeating my comment here) Try getting used to the site switcher. After playing with it internally for a few weeks, I think it's much easier to have all the site switching links in one place.
– David Fullerton♦Nov 14 '13 at 22:40

@DavidFullerton: I'd argue with that. It's a lot harder to find now, especially considering that the like in the switcher doesn't even say main or meta.
– LinuxiosNov 14 '13 at 22:41

11

@David same mistake Microsoft made with Windows 8 by hiding the Start button away. You know how it ended. :)
– Shadow WizardNov 14 '13 at 22:46

9

FWIW, I didn't find it difficult to find—I like the cleaner top bar...
– Andrew CheongNov 14 '13 at 22:47

12

@DavidFullerton The site switcher take 5 seconds to load; it has an extra POST request attached to it.
– ManishearthNov 14 '13 at 22:49

8

@Shog9 Precisely! People complained about the start button missing, and that's what Microsoft fixed. What they were really complaining about was the start menu.
– Aaron BertrandNov 14 '13 at 22:51

5

@David, Shog - the site switcher was super convenient on a tablet. One tap instead of tap, wait, process, mis-tap, back button, repeat. Maybe you could bring it back for tablets?
– PëkkaNov 14 '13 at 22:51

3

@Shog9 seriously now, did you by chance record the usage in the "main" link, maybe be analysing the referrer? If you say less than 10% of users ever used it I'll silently bow my head down and accept my fate. :)
– Shadow WizardNov 14 '13 at 22:54

From an answer that was deleted as a dupe (simultaneous post, but not the same): We have trouble getting people to participate on per-site metas to begin with (at least on some sites) and this change (removing the link) makes it that extra bit more obscure. Plus, I use it all the time (because I do participate on per-site metas).
– Monica Cellio♦Nov 14 '13 at 22:58

@DavidFullerton: It's hard to know how well I like the new site-switcher to togglgle between meta and main until there are both meta and main sites using the new site-switcher...
– FlimzyNov 15 '13 at 1:07

The StackExchange drop-down has this little triangular icon, which makes it obvious that it’s not a link but a drop-down. But such an indicator is missing for the two other drop-downs (inbox, recent reputation).

Possible solutions:

add a triangular icon for the inbox and the recent reputation actions, too

change the style (or at least the hover style) for the two links (user avatar, help), making it look more like links instead of drop-downs

make the links drop-downs, too (e.g., quick user menu links for the avatar; help page links for the help)

We've had long, long conversations about these issues. I'm convinced there's no perfect solution, but the triangle on the logo is necessary because usually the logo goes to the homepage and isn't a drop down. I've generally oppose adding triangles to the two other icons strictly from a aesthetics perspective. The help link will soon be a drop-down also, but I don't think we need a triangle there because the user won't really need to know that he gets additional choices until he clicks. Basically, nobody is going to skip over it because there's no triangle there.
– Jeremy TNov 15 '13 at 23:33

1

@JeremyTunnel: Yes, I wouldn’t recommend adding a triangle to every action. If the help link will become a drop-down, then there is only one link left: the avatar+rep+medal thing. Make it a drop-down, too, so that every "link" in this top bar behaves in the same way.
– unorNov 16 '13 at 0:41

1

@JeremyTunnel I just hope whichever option you end up with that it will be consistent, all drop downs have a triangle or not, having a mix seems the worst solution. The logo drop down isn't special in any case and one would expect other drop downs to have one if that one has one.
– Jonathan DrapeauNov 18 '13 at 15:47

Or, maybe make the dropdown triangle fade in on hover, that way at least it will look consistent while the top bar isn't being used.
– gitsitgoNov 18 '13 at 16:38

The link to the list of sites, which I use very occasionally, is about 140 pixels wide and in a nice accessible location near the left margin (though for some reason not flush left).

The link to the inbox, which I use very often, is about 35 pixels wide and awkwardly located in a middling location.

The inbox also suffers from being an unrecognizable graphic (how about making this a mailbox? or an envelope?) when there are no unread messages, though I suppose users will quickly get used to its location.

This is backward. It's a major drop in usability from the former inbox access which had the inbox as a nice wide button and the first thing on the left (though for some reason not flush left either) whenever messages were pending.

Please make the inbox button wider. It really needs to be wider than the site list since it's more useful, at least when there are unread messages.

I'm unsure about the achievements button (which also has an unrecognizable graphic — is that a bar chart? What does this have to do with achievements?) since I don't know yet what use that list is.

On a similar note, the inbox has a worse contrast than the achievement list. I see the reputation thingy tick away with three characters (soon 4) in bright green that seems poised to assault me, while the inbox is usually a lonesome digit and is in a darkish shade of red that seems to try to stay lurking in its dark alley.

IMHO, it's become one of those things like using a floppy to represent "save" that folks recognize the purpose of without having to recognize what it's meant to be. That said, it was an envelope in the mockups, so I have to assume there was some rationale behind changing it - perhaps this one's a bit more distinct between "read" and "new" states?
– Shog9♦Nov 15 '13 at 0:07

“What does this have to do with achievements?” – Rep are not achievements. And the bar chart actually makes sense.
– pokeNov 15 '13 at 0:07

@poke But the title of the rep/bar chart box says achievements, and it also displays badges there.
– WendiKiddNov 15 '13 at 0:10

@poke The hover text says “reputation changes” but the title when you click on it says “achievements”.
– GillesNov 15 '13 at 0:10

5

@Shog9 Floppy disks are used to represent save today because they were used to represent save yesterday. I've never seen that gray thingy to represent incoming messages before.
– GillesNov 15 '13 at 0:12

4

You’re right… it really does say “achievements”. Meh, it shouldn’t do that :/
– pokeNov 15 '13 at 0:12

I was comparing the envelope to the floppy disk, @Gilles - IMHO, the letter tray is a less familiar anachronism.
– Shog9♦Nov 15 '13 at 0:35

8

@Shog9 I see envelopes if not every day then at least several times a week. Letter trays, I'm sure I've seen one in my life, but they aren't exactly common, and I don't remember seeing one as an icon. Also, is the inbox icon supposed to represent a letter tray? If so, it needs work: it isn't recognizable even if you know what it's supposed to be, unlike typical floppy disk icons (you can always tell that they're 3½" floppies and not 5¼" or 8" — they're that recognizable).
– GillesNov 15 '13 at 0:39

2

There's hover text for the rightmost icon, but not for the inbox icon. Surely I'm not the only that hovers over unknown icons before I click them?
– Joshua TaylorNov 15 '13 at 2:49

2

@Gilles I'm seeing the letter tray more and more online. Confluence uses it for their notifications too.
– Matthew GreenNov 15 '13 at 10:01

1

For some reason, the messages and achievement icons were completely intuitive to me. Although I'm not sure about the usage of the word "achievement". Maybe just leave it as reputation - badges can count as "reputation".
– Cory KleinNov 15 '13 at 17:39

1

I thought the Inbox icon looked like 3D goggles or perhaps a crop-top or sports bra.
– AmicableNov 18 '13 at 9:31

3

@Amicable It looks a bit square for a bra, but I kinda want that to be its official name now.
– GillesNov 18 '13 at 10:16

I miss the mouseover from the portrait that shows recent reputation activity. I know there is a dropdown that shows all of the reputation activity for the whole exchange, but it requires a click to open, and is a small area to target with my mouse.

Please bring back the mouseover popup that showed recent reputation when I hover over my portrait.

If at all possible, it would also be nice to see my user name again. I feel a little too anonymous.

So in that spirit, I would like to see my user name show up (user names in general) in this fashion

And hopefully with this user's support (he had the longest name I know of)

Please restore our names, everyone will be waffle endebted

edit

After using a script to show my user name next to the gravatar I can understand how both can seem to be clutter. Which would you rather have, a username or a gravatar? I am unsure, but I seem to prefer the username. Here is what that version looks like:

The new achievements popup is a direct replacement for the old user one, so we're not really bringing it back as it was. You should instead suggest the specific things that you used in the old popup that you would like added to the new one.
– David Fullerton♦Nov 14 '13 at 23:15

4

@DavidFullerton - In retrospect, I think the main thing I enjoyed was the large area to target with my mouse, and that the area was centered to the screen. The convenience was hovering to open it. The new reputation breakdown is really quite nice in comparison.
– Travis JNov 14 '13 at 23:25

+1 for mouseover to see recent reputation activity. Clicking on the name brought up your profile page before too, so no improvement there.
– a CVnNov 15 '13 at 8:20

4

I say leave the username out, it keeps the bar uncluttered and clean looking. But then again, I use the site enough that I have an image specific to me that isn't auto-generated. Maybe newer users would be confused not knowing what the image actually is.
– Cory KleinNov 15 '13 at 17:36

Yes, totally agree! Was just about to ask if it's removed and if so to put it back. Maybe it can become even smarter e.g. showing other queues as well, each with a different color, but that's a different story.
– Shadow WizardNov 17 '13 at 15:17

@hims056, thanks I totally missed it through the myriads of comments!
– Gabriele PetronellaNov 15 '13 at 6:25

@hims056 but that sounds like it's only going to get hot questions from one site. Or is it going to pull from the entire network? That's the part that I like, learning about new things that aren't necessarily in my brain box.
– MikeTheLiarNov 15 '13 at 14:07

7

@mikeTheLiar it will be the same hot questions from the entire network
– David Fullerton♦Nov 15 '13 at 14:34

@MonicaCellio You've got a legitimate use case, but it's just really low-frequency. In aggregate, our users just don't use the recent badge list. In all honesty, it's probably going to disappear, but I'm committed to making sure that it comes back somewhere. We are throwing around ideas for the /users page
– Jeremy TNov 15 '13 at 18:23

@JeremyTunnell, I just care that it be available. It doesn't have to be on the front page in particular. I'm not sure how you're measuring (non-)usage, but it is something that mods and "senior" users on at least some sites use for community-building purposes, so I hope you'll be able to find a place for it. Thanks for considering the request.
– Monica Cellio♦Nov 15 '13 at 18:35

@JeremyTunnell can I ask whether you guys considered to put tabs in the new dropdown? Hot Questions could be a second tab next to Explore our sites and this would solve the issue of rearranging the side bar.
– Gabriele PetronellaNov 15 '13 at 18:37

However, it could be improved: The sites at the top of the Site Switcher should be the sites we use most often.

The sites I have high rep on are not necessarily the ones I'm using frequently. For instance, Board & Card Games is at position #8 on my sites sorted by rep. On UX, I have only 103 rep. They're being crowded out of the Site Switcher by Programmers, Arqade and Code Review - I might have a lot of rep in those sites, but I haven't used those in over a year or two, so there's no value in having a quick link to them.

Rather than listing the top 5 sites we have by rep, it should do one of the following:

Maybe a bug: it does not actually show my top 5 sites by rep. For whatever reason, area51 isn't there for me (despite being my #2 site). I guess it's not worth fixing if this manual sorting thing is going to replace the autosort soon.
– FrankNov 15 '13 at 3:51

Try getting used to the site switcher. After playing with it internally for a few weeks, I think it's much easier to have all the site switching links in one place.
– David Fullerton♦Nov 14 '13 at 22:31

@DavidFullerton It may be easier for devs who monitor many different sites. But 95% of my SE experience is via Physics Main, Physics Meta, and Physics Chat. Surely I'm not the only one who spends a majority of my time in one particular corner of the SE Network.
– user206562Nov 15 '13 at 0:00

1

@RobertHarvey I didn't use the "chat" link much, but the "main" link (mentioned above) I could reach by typing "main", which autosearched for the text, hitting escape (to leave the link highlighted), and hitting enter (to follow the link). Now I can't get to chat or main by doing that. As much as I like the ThinkPad's trackpoint, it can be much easier to follow a predictably named link by typing rather than hitting "Home" (to get to the top of the screen), moving a hand to the mouse, pointing, missing, pointing again, etc.
– Joshua TaylorNov 15 '13 at 2:46

3

@RobertHarvey This doesn't apply to all the stack exchange sites, but StackOverflow is intended for professional and enthusiast programmers; I think that that target audience is probably one of the most keyboard-centric that will be found, and it probably make sense to cater to them (at least on SO and Meta).
– Joshua TaylorNov 15 '13 at 2:48

@RobertHarvey Sort of, except that in web browsers, textual links are already pretty functional keyboard shortcuts. Grumpy programmer want typey, not clicky. :) In all seriousness, though, I don't know of many websites that use keyboard shortcuts all that effectively (GMail comes to mind as one that does). Unless there will be plenty of keyboard shortcuts, I don't know that the odd one here and there will be all that helpful.
– Joshua TaylorNov 15 '13 at 16:37

Here's a userscript that adds the 'main' and 'chat' links.
– KeenNov 15 '13 at 21:51

@DavidFullerton I'm with ChrisWhite on this one; I spend more like 98% of my time on SciFi.SE, switching between its main/meta/chat, only occasionally venturing out to the other sites. At the very least, please keep that trio directly in the topbar as well as the menu...
– IzkataNov 18 '13 at 4:22

I could get used to the blackness here on meta, but I don't like the
StackExchange in colour: and I can't help thinking it's going to clash
on other sites.

And applying it across all sites? What about Programmers, where
the top bar is part of the design? Surely you're not going to
sacrifice that on the altar of uniformity? And on Photography -
where it's already black, but nice and sleek and thin, not chunky and
imposing like the new one.

@random Something that doesn't divide the page into BAR and NOT BAR quite so heavily. The light grey colour scheme felt like it respected the rest of the page, was an addition to it. This hits you in the face, saying "I am the most important, don't look at the questions, they are not ME"
– Richard TingleNov 14 '13 at 22:49

3

I think the real problem here is the light-colored rest of the page. Just think how great this is gonna look on Science Fiction & Fantasy!
– Shog9♦Nov 14 '13 at 22:53

@Shog9 True, are the rest of the site's design going to change to compensate as well?
– Richard TingleNov 14 '13 at 22:57

Not unless you request it and garner a ridiculously massive amount of support. I, for one, would really dig a light-on-black MSO... (but I doubt that too many others would)
– Shog9♦Nov 14 '13 at 23:02

The first one isn't implemented yet. But if we click on site switching icon (i.e. Stack Exchange) while the page is loading, it will redirect to stackexchange.com.
– hims056Nov 19 '13 at 9:03

4

@hims056 that's a "noscript" fallback, meant for those with JavaScript disabled (the raw HTML source simply has the link and JS code replace it with the awesomeness). Not really acceptable workaround. :-/
– Shadow WizardNov 19 '13 at 9:10

As I wrote before, I find the number of votes I've cast today to be useful information, and I want to access it quickly as this is quickly-changing data. It was available before when hovering on the user name. Please restore it.

The number of favorites change would be good to have too. Where are favorite changes gone? I neither want them nor see them in the inbox, where they'd be clutter. I neither see them nor see them in the achievement list, where they'd be drowned in the mass.

On the other hand, the list of badges changes very slowly. It doesn't belong in the top bar, really. Removing that would be a nice way to make room for more useful information.

We've considered this, but there are a few problems with that: it's a lot of icons, and the badge icons are not consistent one site to the next, so we'd have to either a) pick a new and different badge icon (very confusing if it's not like your most used site at all), or b) load the CSS and sprite files for every site (crazy complicated and expensive).
– Nick Craver♦Nov 16 '13 at 0:23

You may try filling colours? If not, the new topbar is still fantastic!
– shad0w_wa1k3rNov 16 '13 at 4:30

@NickCraver How about one sprite file for the network with one row per SE site, and columns of bronze/silver/gold badges? Even if there were 50 sites it'd only be about 15-20kb. Whenever a new site leaves beta, just add a row to the sprite. If in future you want a new element shared between sites, just add a column for it. etc etc
– user568458Nov 21 '13 at 15:05

@user568458 the badges are different sizes is the issue there, the top bar is supposed to be consistent. The sprite for all SE sites is planned, as both a performance booster to favicon loads and lets us do retina versions way easier.
– Nick Craver♦Nov 21 '13 at 15:24

Today is only summed if there's only 1 site with rep today (since a single site icon + total is a huge space waster and adds no value). It was not the intent to sum all sections.
– Nick Craver♦Nov 15 '13 at 16:11

What OS and browser were used to take this screenshot? The top bar of the menu is going out more than the rest of the dropdown, similar to what I have under Ubuntu and what is also showing in OSX.
– Jonathan DrapeauNov 15 '13 at 16:22

Light grey on white shows you how hip the site is
– randomNov 14 '13 at 23:28

If you're talking about the inbox item text, I just pushed a fix for it. Before we had an opacity of 0.8 on "read items," dark text for new items. now all the text are the same dark text. We'll be adding a new visual treatment for "unread items" later
– JinNov 14 '13 at 23:40

6

No, I'm talking about the font used for reputation points and badge counts, for instance.
– aleNov 14 '13 at 23:44

2

@jin You know what it needs? Some bold.
– Kevin Montrose♦Nov 15 '13 at 4:58

1

Bolding the rep points (or something else to make them stand out - maybe just bump the font size slightly?) seems like a good idea. The other tweaks that were made seem to have sorted out the readability issues, at least for my eyes and monitor :-)
– voretaq7Nov 16 '13 at 3:09

I want to know about votes on my answers/questions after reaching the rep-cap.

The achievements dropdown is simply fantastic. I really like the idea that you can see you rep changes network-wide. There has always been something that irritated me even with the old top bar; you cannot know about votes on your answers after hitting the rep-cap. You see, it's very nice, you hover over the old one and it used to tell you what answers got upvoted. But after hitting the rep-cap, you're left in the dark.

I have a weird display error with the network drop down in Firefox. The width of both the header and the actual content box is bigger than the wrapper around which restricts the size and also makes the drop shadow. The header is actually even wider making it look very weird:

On the left you can see the box how it is currently displayed for me. The gray header is actually wider than the rest of the box. If you look at the drop shodow at the bottom, you can also see that the scroll bars are actually partially outside of the box. The screenshots are both cropped at the same position, so you can see the difference in width.

Removing the width: 100%; from both .topbar-dialog .header and .topbar-dialog .modal-content fixes this.

It looks like they missed the -moz- prefix for box-sizing: border-box;, that's why it looks good in Chrome, but not in Firefox.

The achievements dropdown is really confused a lot of the time when leaving a Meta page open.

The achievement box doesn't reload the drop-down after further achievements are gained. If you leave a page open, gained reputation, and opened the drop-down once, the next time you gain reputation the green rep counter shows your gained points, but clicking on the dropdown then shows old, now stale information.

Here I gained an accept:

but the dropdown shows old, stale info; I am at +260 by now really:

After closing the dropdown, the green label disappears, but after opening a new page, the count is back and opening the dropdown gives:

adding in the most recent two events (one of which I had not yet seen).

Note that the achievements counter didn't clear properly either. I opened a new page (or I could have reloaded the current page), and the same green reputation gained count showed up again, creating more confusion.

Can the achievement handling be updated to continue to work properly when one page (a questions list) remains open for a prolonged period of time? After gaining more reputation, the dropdown contents should be reloaded and the server updated that I have seen the reputation gain properly.

The same problem largely applies to the inbox as well. The unread messages number doesn't stick like the green reputation delta does, but the dropdown is not reloaded on new messages. This is rather irritating, having to open a new page just to read the message and have a click target. This was reported in a separate Meta post as well.

I've also seen it report the total reputation gained for the day so far, intermittently, showing a +230 after I had already opened the dropdown. I'm putting that down to a temporary glitch for now.

@Gilles: Could be, I've seen some inbox weirdness as well. I'll keep a close eye on that.
– Martijn PietersNov 20 '13 at 12:39

achievements have been intended to be much more understandable than garbage that is currently shown to you: "The big green number is how much rep you've gained since the last time you checked."
– gnatNov 20 '13 at 12:39

1

@Gilles: the inbox is working fine for me at the moment. Both your comment and gnat's showed up separately and the count cleared properly both times. Opening a new page doesn't show the inbox counter again.
– Martijn PietersNov 20 '13 at 12:42

@Gilles: Okay, I have to take that back. This applies to the inbox as well; the number updates properly but the dropdown itself does not reload. I am looking at a stale inbox with the new message not listed.
– Martijn PietersNov 20 '13 at 12:52

We now cache and de-cache this appropriately, it was waiting on a rather large JS refactor.
– Nick Craver♦Dec 4 '13 at 18:10

I'm just wondering how this will fit into Ask Ubuntu, they already have a top bar that needs to match up with a specific aesthetic.

Adding the all-new almost all-black top bar would seem wrong somehow. At the top it would interfere with the Ubuntu top bar and it would be equally bad (if not worse) where the old bar is right now considering it's black.

I really like this - although it will take some getting used to. Two feature request though, one related to one I asked some time ago:

Can the order of sites in the drop down please be user configurable, perhaps with options for sort by rep, most recent visit, alphabetical or possibly drag to sort?

And can we set how many sites we want before it goes to the general view. Most days I look at my top 12 sites, but also another couple that are of extra interest but that I still have low rep on. I'd like to have them all easily and quickly available through the drop down.

I keep clicking this text thinking it's going to bring me to the all sites page.

IMO, it's intuitive that it should. And I'd like it if it did, because I've grown accustomed to accessing certain sites by navigating first to the all sites page (if only because that page is pretty :-).

In any case though, can we at least add the CSS property cursor: default on it so the cursor doesn't change whilst hovering past that text? 95% of the time we toggle that dropdown, we're gonna have to cross that text to click on any of the links. No one will ever need to highlight that text.

When hovering over a site in the "Explore our sites" list, why not display the site links "chat", "blog", "meta"?

It wouldn’t "hurt" in any way. Everyone hovering over these site links either wants to visit the SE’s main site or wants to visit a sub-site (meta, chat, blog) of it, by clicking at the main site first, and then opening the StackExchange menu again and clicking at the sub-site link. So it would save 3 clicks and a site load.

A different solution would be to display a little icon (e.g., a triangle) right from the site name, which, when clicked at, opens a little menu with the sub-site links (similar to Google’s Cache link).

Can we have a little clicky drag thing (my brain isn't working tonight, I can't remember what they're called) to drag and change the height of the inbox? It's a minor thing, but I don't like that it goes so far down the page. This is my personal preference, so rather than changing it for everyone, it would be nice if we could drag to adjust the height ourselves (not the width, obviously, but the height.) And if it would remember what we'd done previously, that would be great :) Obviously this isn't a hugely important request.... My eyes can travel a bit further down the page if they must :) But it seems odd to me for a header element to go so far down the page, so it'd be a nice-to-have for me to be able to adjust the height to my own preference.

Yes please! I use that link too. I could just visit my profile and click the activity tab, though - but I'll upvote this since I'm a regular user of the existing link.
– doppelgreenerNov 16 '13 at 3:56

This is my most used link as I use comments as a way of keeping track of what questions I might need to revisit... losing this means soo many more clicks.
– ben is uǝq backwardsNov 17 '13 at 13:57

1

I think inbox is proper place to add an "activity" link.
– hims056Nov 19 '13 at 5:58